Few things light a fire under someone like being underestimated.

When a gifted woman’s family tried to steer her into a more “traditionally female” field, all they did was fuel her to excel in engineering.

Years later, her hard really work paid off when she found herself getting a chance to prove her skills in front of the ex-father-in-law who once doubted her.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Wife was told she should enter nursing school instead of engineering…nah.

I met my wife in high school. This was in the late 1980s, graduated college in 1992.

Although we never really hit it off at that time, we were in the same groups.

After high school, she was “volun-told” by her boomer parents to marry a boyfriend and move out of the house.

It was not me.

She was still unsure of her life’s path at that point.

She was working as a Nurse’s Assistant and her boyfriend (now husband) was going to the college of engineering.

She wanted to go to school, but was not sure about the direction.

Being smart, she wanted to challenge herself, so she started looking at law school.

She had a lot of potential, but right now, she mainly just supported her husband.

She went to college during the day and worked at night to help support the husband who just went to school.

They finally had some free time and were invited to join his parents for a dinner.

But when she shared her plans with her in-laws, they were dismissive at best.

During the dinner, the FIL started a ramble about how hard the engineering school was (he was a Professional Engineer) and that law school might be as tough.

He insisted that she look into going to nursing school, since “you already work like a nurse.”

The son, her husband, agreed and said it might be easier for her.

So she knew what she had to do next.

She took that as a challenge and immediately enrolled into the Chemical Engineering department, the only female among 120 students in the program.

It was tough, she was harassed, and had to always take the higher ground in defending her work.

All that hard work paid off.

Four years later, she graduated with honors and a ChemEng degree.

Her husband had taken some time off from the program, got caught up in an affair, and she dumped his sorry behind.

But life had a big plot twist coming.

Many years later, she went to court as a SME (Subject Matter Expert) for a landfill management company, testifying as an SME against her former FIL who was an SME as THE landfill designer/PE stamp that designed the landfill.

I am not 100% sure of details except she testified in court against her former FIL’s designs and they spoke afterwards.

She had not spoken to that family since the divorce.

She was surprised by what her former FIL had to say next.

In casual conversation, outside the courtroom, her former FIL was grateful she did not attack him personally, but she did support the design flaws, and he acknowledged the flaws.

In conversation, her ex-husband came up and his new career.

It turns out, her ex’s life had taken a turn too.

He had dropped out of engineering school, married the girl from the affair… and was working as a nurse in an old folks’ home. (No shame, highly valued position!)

The former FIL understood the irony but could not understand how a woman could beat out 120 men to be Dean’s List in an engineering program.

Hope this brightens your day.

She took every condescending word from her husband’s family and distilled them into pure motivation.

What did Reddit think?

You best believe women can do whatever men do — often better.

A woman in a similar field wants to get out the message to empower other girls to study STEM too!

Spite is a heck of a motivator.

The path to success may be more difficult as a woman in some male-dominated fields, but that just makes it all the more rewarding!

Life has a funny way of engineering the perfect plot twist.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.